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Disturbance and diversity in experimental microcosms

Nature volume 408, pages 961–964 (2000)Cite this article

Abstract

External agents of mortality (disturbances) occur over a wide range of scales of space and time, and are believed to have large effects on species diversity. The “intermediate disturbance hypothesis”1,2,3, which proposes maximum diversity at intermediate frequencies of disturbance, has received support from both field4,5 and laboratory6,7 studies. Coexistence of species at intermediate frequencies of disturbance is thought to require trade-offs between competitive ability and disturbance tolerance8, and a metapopulation structure, with disturbance affecting only a few patches at any given time9,10,11. However, a unimodal relationship can also be generated by global disturbances that affect all patches simultaneously, provided that the environment contains spatial niches to which different species are adapted12. Here we report the results of tests of this model using both isogenic and diverse populations of the bacterium Pseudomonas fluorescens. In both cases, a unimodal relationship between diversity and disturbance frequency was generated in heterogeneous, but not in homogeneous, environments. The cause of this relationship is competition among niche-specialist genotypes, which maintains diversity at intermediate disturbance, but not at high or low disturbance. Our results show that disturbance can modulate the effect of spatial heterogeneity on biological diversity in natural environments.

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Figure 1: The effect of disturbance frequency on diversity, in the case where competitive ability and disturbance tolerance are negatively related.
Figure 2: The effect of disturbance frequency on diversity, in the case where competitive ability and disturbance tolerance are positively related.
Figure 3: Mean diversity (1 - λ) at different frequencies of disturbance in heterogeneous and homogeneous environments, after 16 days.
Figure 4: Relative fitness (W) of WS (solid bars) and SM (hatched bars) genotypes after 16 days when initiated at a ratio of 1:100.

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Acknowledgements

We thank J. Pannell, N. Colegrave, K. McCann and M. Brockhurst for comments and discussion. This work was supported by the UK NERC and BBSRC (A.B. and P.B.R.), the Canadian NSERC (G.B. and R.K.) and the British Council.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Plant Sciences, University of Oxford, Oxford, OX1 3RB, UK

    Angus Buckling & Paul B. Rainey

  2. Department of Biology, McGill University, Montreal, H3A 1B1, Quebec, Canada

    Rees Kassen & Graham Bell

  3. Redpath Museum, McGill University , Montreal, H3A 2K6, Quebec, Canada

    Graham Bell

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  1. Angus Buckling
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  2. Rees Kassen
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Correspondence to Angus Buckling.

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Buckling, A., Kassen, R., Bell, G. et al. Disturbance and diversity in experimental microcosms. Nature 408, 961–964 (2000). https://doi.org/10.1038/35050080

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